PSYC 100 Lecture Notes - Lecture 4: Stranger Danger, Parenting Styles, Longitudinal Study
8 Oct 2016
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PSYC100 Lecture 4 Notes
Attachment
The enduring emotional bond formed between individuals
• Initial bond: between infant and caregiver
• Develops from the basic needs of safety and survival
• Psychological comfort
o Especially when feeling stressed or insecure
• At first it was believed to be all about being fed
o There was an attached bond between infant and caregiver because the caregiver
gave the infant food
o The infant needs food to survive and so it was a survival bond
Harlow’s work (1950)
• Infant rhesus monkeys raised without mothers
• Cloth pads
o The monkeys slept and loved the cloth pads and when they were removed for
cleaning it caused great discomfort for the monkeys
• Food versus physical comfort: what drives the formation of attachment
• Experiments
o Wire vs. cloth “mother”/provided food or not
→ some of them provided food and others didn’t and he saw how they reacted to
this attachment
o Other manipulations (e.g. fear)
→ would make a loud noise and see which mother they would choose for
comfort
• RESULTS:
o CLOTH “mother” regardless of food, won each and every time
→ maybe attachment is more then just about food
feeling secure, based on Physical comfort
→ Can we experiment this at all on infant humans?
→ how to ethically study this phenomenon
Stranger Anxiety (“stranger danger”)
• Signs of distress that infants start to show towards strangers
• Develops at around 8 months of age
→ they start to develop cognitively and can discriminate between people they know and
people they actually don’t know
→ they show signs of anxiety if someone they don’t know comes close to them and they
always want to be near or with someone they actually do know and feel comfortable with
Ainsworth: “strange situation” paradigm
• How do infants behave when faced with different situations regarding anxiety and
comfort?
→ There was a glass wall between the child and parents and the random person and they
would note how the child would behave
→ they would then send a stranger in and see how the child would behave while the
stranger and the parent were there
→ they would then tell the parent to leave the room and see how the child would then
react with only the stranger
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Document Summary
Some of them provided food and others didn"t and he saw how they reacted to this attachment: other manipulations (e. g. fear) Would make a loud noise and see which mother they would choose for comfort: results, cloth mother regardless of food, won each and every time. Maybe attachment is more then just about food feeling secure, based on physical comfort. Stranger anxiety ( stranger danger : signs of distress that infants start to show towards strangers, develops at around 8 months of age. They start to develop cognitively and can discriminate between people they know and people they actually don"t know. They show signs of anxiety if someone they don"t know comes close to them and they always want to be near or with someone they actually do know and feel comfortable with. There was a glass wall between the child and parents and the random person and they would note how the child would behave.
